The State government has decided to infuse more safeguards into the controversial Fab City project including reserving the right of resuming land from the promoter if he fails to perform. Though the government will give all the incentives as per the memorandum of understanding, the incentives as well as the ownership of the land would be linked to the performance of the promoter.

Official sources told this correspondent that a high level meeting chaired by chief secretary J. Harinarayana took several new decisions, which will be incorporated in the GO expected to be issued in a couple of days.

“The land will be given to the Special Purpose Vehicle and the promoter will be asked to show his performance periodically. His performance will be evaluated regularly. We have been incorporating a clause that will empower the government to resume land from either the promoter or the SPV in the event of their failure to perform as per the time schedule fixed out,” a senior official involved in the project said. “Similar is the case with incentives,” he added.

Though the government has been trying to project that the SPV would play a decisive role and three of its nominees were already on the board, the equity structure would leave the government with a limited role.

Sources said the Chief Secretary had suggested some more safeguard mechanisms to protect the government’s interests. The meeting felt that it would not be in the interest of the project to change the equity structure or re-negotiate on the incentives at this stage.

The officials suggested that the government should also play an active role in attracting companies to the Fab City instead of leaving it to the SemIndia. Meanwhile, SemIndia founder Vinod Agarwal will hold a press conference on Tuesday evening to give a rebuttal to the allegations made by Telugu Desam vis-à-vis his credibility to handle the project and irregularities in the MoU.